The Fateful Ninth

We’re going live now. Bottom of the ninth. A run here and the Tigers go to the World Series. A successful job means 2 2/3 innings, and counting, for A’s reliever Huston Street. Somehow, the old cliche “there’s no tomorrow” seems kind of appropriate right now.

Marcus Thames, the Tigers’ DH in Game 1 but invisible since then, is leading off. He takes a weak cut and flies out to center. Now it’s Curtis Granderson, whose fifth-inning double scored the Tigers’ first run and brought the crowd to life. The Tigers are no strangers to walk-off wins, having registered seven during the regular season.

Out in right field, Milton Bradley perseveres. He not only has continued to play after pulling up with a first-inning cramp, he has three hits — all to the opposite field while batting left-handed — and when he turned around to the right side to face Wilfredo Ledezma in the ninth, he hit a shot to right field that would have left the park if it hadn’t been blown back by the wind.

Now Bradley is taking it to an even higher level. Granderson hit a screaming line drive to right center — a big TRIPLE written all over it, considering Bradley’s condition and that spacious part of the ballpark — but Bradley summoned the will and the speed to make a tremendous catch on the run.

Still, the Tigers are alive. Both Craig Monroe and Placido Polanco (does he ever go away?) have singled, putting runners at first and second. Magglio Ordonez, one of the league leaders in Bad Haircuts but a tough customer at the plate, is stepping in. You wonder how long Street can survive out there.

It’s a shot to left. It’s gone! The Tigers are going to the World Series. They’re going crazy at home plate as Street walks off the field. Ordonez absolutely crushed one, no doubt about it, a titanic shot, one that will go down with the most memorable in postseason history and quite near the top in Tigers’ lore.

Milton Bradley is the last Oakland player coming off the field, in a slow walk. He’s pointing to someone on the Tigers, as if to say, “Job well done.” He’s pausing now, and I’ve got my eye on him, becase he was the Oakland A’s today. Now he has been acknowledged, but Bradley is hanging around, all by himself, outside the A’s dugout.

Wow. It appears that Jim Leyland is the man Bradley was acknowledging. Now Leyland is coming over to pay his respects to the A’s. What a class act. My God, he is far and away the best manager in baseball today. Nobody seems even close to him right now. Leyland knows the feeling of heartbreak, and he knows how the A’s feel right now, and he has left the madness of his own team’s triumph to commiserate with Oakland.

It’s quite a scene here. Tremendous snapshots of a World Series-bound team. Heaven knows the Tigers deserved it. From the dregs of baseball just three years ago, they are champions of the American League.